(Draft v1.0) Demesne Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here's the first draft of the first chapter of the Amazon edition. I'm not going to put up EVERY chapter, but I figure I'd put up a few of the early ones. Some typos and errors that have been untouched for YEARS have finally been found, terminology has been updated to match the rest of the story (no more of these strange 'feet' measurements), and some additions and changes that make me feel better. What do you guys think?

Our Protagonist, Unfortunately ● Do-It-Yourself Dungeon ● How to Build a Dungeon's Core ● Parts and Advanced Features Not Included ● When a Lord And A Lady Love Each Other Very Much…

In the middle of the rains, they finally finished digging out the cave for the core for the demesne.

Whisperer Lolilyuri, Lori to most, had been in the midst of fortifying the water break around the settlement, the rain dripping down from the wide brim of her pointy leather hat, when one of the children had reached her. The little girl had paused as she'd gotten near, staring at the large beast on the other side of the water break, then at its head a few feet away. The beast's neck was still steaming slightly from the heat of its body, though blood no longer flowed so freely from the wound.

"Wiz Lori?" the child said. She was thin, though not quite skin and bones yet. Lori remembered her being much more plump when they set off from Covehold Demesne weeks ago. Now her dress hung loose on her. "Lord Rian says you need to come quick, they finally finished digging."

"Give me a little longer," Lori said, sweeping her staff through the shallow trough of the water break like she was sweeping a broom or an oar, the thin metal strand of wire under her hand warm from her body heat as it took her magic down to the water. Breathe in, channel the magic through her blood and out her oil and sweat glands into the wire, into the water…

"Lord Rian said you needed to come now," the annoying brat insisted.

"I got the message, now go away before I drown you," Lori said, not looking up from what she was doing. Standing in the wet of the rain was not improving her mood, no matter how much safer it was than being dry.

Alas, the younger generation had no sense of self-preservation. The brat began to tug on the back of her rain coat as if that would get her moving.

Lori let out a large sigh. Fortunately for the child's prospects of being aquatically asphyxiated, she had finished imbuing the waterwisps by then, and they would have enough power to flow for the next day or so before Lori needed to imbue the water again to keep the beasts around them mostly at bay. Enough time for her to make the core of the demesne, especially if there was another rain before the imbuement on the waterwisps ran out.

"Right, fine," she said, feeling her wet socks squish as she caught her breath. It had been weeks since she'd had socks that were dry longer than an hour. "Come on, where's Rian?"

"Lord Rian," the child corrected.

"He's not a lord," Lori corrected right back. "If he were, he wouldn't be here."

Actually, Lori was fairly sure he was, purely on the evidence of his straight teeth, smooth skin, and his inept but good naturedly enthusiastic approach to manual labor. No one who'd ever actually worked for a living would be that bad at it. He was probably rebelling against his father or seeking his own fortune or some rainbow. Well, not her problem. He'd obviously never studied ancient history or ever done any real politics. If he actually had, he was smarter than he looked. Though that wasn't hard, since he often looked like a fool.

She followed the little girl back to the settlement, traditionally nameless until it had a demesne and Dungeon to protect it from the Iridescence. The settlement had over a hundred fifty people left, mostly living in crude shelters of canvas and what little wood and metal rods they'd been able to bring, since the wood from the local trees were still iridiated, though some people had risked using it because of the rains. They had set out with three hundred people and over 30 families. Now only fifteen families—or what was left of them—remained alive, as well as a few lone opportunists lured in by the promise of untapped resources, and yes, she included the probably-lord in that category. Lori was one of them herself, here for the chance to lay claim to her own demesne and Dungeon, and the power that came with it.

Right now though, she had to tramp through wet mud that still occasionally faintly flickered in different colors. The sight of it made her shiver, even if it was just harmless trace elements already dissolving into the water.

The foundation of the demesne had been dug at the base of the stone cliff the settlement planned to eventually put a watchtower on, but would for now act to protect the settlement on one side, with a river for water nearby. They'd very quickly recalled the importance of water when you were without a demesne to protect you. The cliff had a natural, if not very deep, cave at the foot of it, situated such that water did not flood in when it rained, which made it ideal for digging. Fortunately, there had been no iridiated beasts sheltering in it when they found it, so Lori had been able to call waterwisps to blast out the surface Iridescence on the rock and dirt so that people could start building the foundation for the Dungeon.

The next rain after finding the cave had resulted in beasts seeking the shelter of the cave in droves. They had prepared for it to happen, but had still lost over thirty settlers to lasting injury and ten to death before the rain had washed out enough of the Iridescence to render the beasts attacking them in too much pain to attack. When the rains had stopped, they'd been able to butcher the now-clean animals that had still been alive for meat. The settlers had made a celebration out of it, the first wild beast meat in months, or even years in some cases. For many of them, it had been the first meat they had ever tasted that hadn't lived all its short life in water. The meat had been good. No one had ended up becoming iridiated over the next few days. That was even better.

People had still died anyway, lingering in pain, the settlement's few medical supplies unable to save them. Some had iridiated, their wounds tainted from the beasts' teeth and claws. They'd been given the mercy of death, their bodies set aside to make undead when the Dungeon was finished, then buried when the decaying corpses had risked causing disease

Though now, with a place for her to start building a Dungeon to anchor their demesne, that could all start to change. They'd finally have a safe area to build, a place to farm and harvest that wouldn't taint them just by standing in it. They'd finally be able to use their barrels and buckets and water casks to drink instead of just washing away the Iridescence, they'd finally have a place to call their own without the laws of the old continent that they'd left behind.

If she did this right, Lori certainly would. Unless someone had been holding out to a truly suicidal degree, Lori was the only wizard within 25 taums. 30 taums if she was lucky; there'd been a lot of wizards on the ship she'd been on, with more in the other ships that had also set out. Her own ship had left the old continent as one of seven. The settlement itself had set off with three wizards: Lori, another Whisperer who'd seemed another noble playing at being incognito judging by how her nose had been raised so high she had probably been looking out at the world through her nostrils, and a Deadspeaker who'd been nice enough and whose undead beasts had drawn what few wagons the settlers had. Both were dead now (though Lori hadn't killed them).

Lori had made sure their remains had been set aside with care. Their help had gotten them alive this far, and it was thanks to the Deadspeaker's undead and the stone wheels she and the other Whisperer had crafted that their group of settlers were able to travel farther inland than they otherwise would have been able to. She was sure they would make for fine undead for her Dungeon. It was the least she could do.

She'd also called first pick of their belongings, and now she had all sorts of useful tools. Some she wouldn't be able to use until she had a Dungeon, but that was true of a lot of things she owned.

These and other happy thoughts managed to keep her occupied as they made their way towards the cliff face. Men were throwing buckets of water inside to wash out the Iridescence that was starting to grow again. Well, at least they were no longer wasting it by throwing water everywhere that shone of many colors. That was either restraint or growing self-destructive apathy. Lori was surprised no one was actually standing in—no, she'd thought that too soon, there was someone standing with a foot each in a bucket of water, never mind the rain would keep him safe.

Ah, these people who would be the one to settle this land. The common clay of this new demesne. Why did they all have to be morons?

Speaking of morons, probably-lord Rian was striding to meet her. And that was definitely striding, a confident, proud step that probably looked very impressive in the paved streets of the cities but was pretty much a slipping hazard in—and he'd slipped and landed on his rear. There was a round of chuckles as he scrambled to his feet, looking chagrined, and a nearby man gave some 'helpful' advice cautioning him about being careful how he walked.

Rian had the self-satisfied eyes of someone who'd deliberately made a fool of himself just to get a laugh, probably to help raise morale or something. Lori thought morale would be better raised by everyone knowing the closest thing to a leader the settlement had right then was actually competent and careful, but what did she know? No, clearly he had to slip and do pratfalls. Ugh, no wonder he was here, maybe-a-lord or not. The other lords were probably well rid of him.

"So, you're done?" she said briskly, leaning on her staff. After standing all day, her feet were killing her.

"All done, Whisperer Lori," he said, using her official title. "Broke the rock down as you specified and leveled it as best we could with the tools we had. You softening the rock really helped, it was like digging clay. We gave the inside a good wash too, so there shouldn't be any Iridescence. The rest is up to you." He smiled at her, a confident, trusting smile that made her want to roll her eyes. But no, he'd been polite and even used her official title, so that would be rude.

"Thank you," she said. "Then I'll get the things I need and get started."

As it was her tent wasn't that far from the cave. After all, she needed to be nearby to supervise and make sure things weren't going too wrong, and she needed to blast the cave with water in the mornings to destroy any Iridescence that had built up while they were asleep. A days' growth usually wasn't too dangerous, but it was better to be safe when it came to her Dungeon.

Lori could feel the intent gazes as she knelt down to get her pack, the one she'd half-sunk into the ground under the canvas tent she shared with two other women, to keep from it being stolen or otherwise tampered with. Never mind that anyone messing with someone else's things would probably result in a lynching, she didn't trust these superstitious idiots not to go through her things in hopes of getting who knew what like this was some kind of bedtime story. She'd used to carry the pack around with her until she had tired of how heavy it was.

She took a breath, breathing in magic around her in the familiar exercise before channeling the power through her bones and out through her fingernails, into the hardened rock trapping her pack. The earthwisps there responded readily, having grown familiar with the taste of her magic, and she claimed and bound the wisps, loosening the earth around her pack and making it flow like a fluid. She pulled out the pack and hefted it in her arms, then hesitated. Then she reached down into the still flowing earth and called the wisps in it to her as she drew out a small portion of the ground, pulling it up like clay, forming it into a ball in her hands. The ground hardened again as her magic was consumed by the earthwisps, the part in her hands solidifying into stone even as the wisps that had responded to her call grew still, their imbuement expended.

Straightening, she picked up her staff, pretending not to see the ones who'd been eyeing it.

"I'll need some time to complete the core," Lori said as she slung her trusty pack over her back. "Make sure I'm not interrupted, not even for food. If there's another attack, you'll have to deal with it yourselves, because if I stop I'll have to start all over again."

"Understood, Whisperer Lori," Rian said, an almost comical determined look in his eyes. "Don't worry, I know how important this is for the settlement. Do what you have to do to keep us safe, and we'll keep you safe while you do it."

If anyone else had said it, the words would just have been trite and corny. For some reason when Rian said it, men that Lori knew had been eyeing her staff—likely believing those silly superstitions and stories about how taking a wizard's staff put them in your power—nodded in solemn agreement and looked determined, some hefting their tools.

"That's nice," Lori said. "Oh, could you butcher that beast I killed, just beyond the water break? Best not to waste any meat, the rain will be able to wash out any iridiation still in its muscles. The girl can show you where it is."

They'd probably have said the same thing for either of the two idiots who'd gotten themselves killed, Lori reminded herself. They didn't actually like her or trust her, they just wanted safety. Well, she'd give it to them.

To make a Dungeon and the demesne that surrounded it was actually relatively simple, provided you were a wizard and could actually do it. A lot of the stories commoners told were of ordinary folk somehow stumbling into a Dungeon and claiming it in ignorance or by accident, becoming mighty and powerful in the process. Rainbows. There was no way to claim a Dungeon by accident. Every wizard knew that. But not, obviously, most ordinary folk.

Creating a Dungeon and claiming one were based on the same procedure. One merely took longer than the other because of a lack of infrastructure. Infrastructure that Lori would have to build herself.

After melding her blanket to the stone over the entrance to give herself some privacy and block out the cold winds coming from outside, Lori got to work.

She began by checking her pack, making sure she still had all she needed. A vial containing the last of her baby teeth. Her brass syringe. A small glass bowl. A glass phial with a good cork stopper. A cheap clay cup. Five brass-backed glass mirrors. A fat candle which she'd been saving through her whole trip from the old continent. A piece of quartz. Eight gold-plated lead disks, each about the size of her palm and thin as her thumbnail. A sealed glass bottle with a glass stopper containing a glittering powder. Her pillow. Her last pair of dry socks.

She was NOT doing this with wet feet.

She'd taken off her pointy leather hat, letting her short dark hair free of the constricting brim to tickle the back of her neck. She'd have to find someone with a pair of scissors she could borrow to cut it again. Something to remember for later.

The workspace was as she'd specified. Dirt and surface rock had been excavated to a depth of over two paces, creating a bowl-like space in the rock. She saw tool marks mixed in with the inexplicable handprints and strange mixed strata of where softened stone had been molded by hands and tools. That wasn't very common, with most of the shaping work being done by the settlement's stonecutters and one aspiring sculptor who looked like he cried himself to sleep at night and wished he'd stayed on the old continent.

Still, it was a good, decent workspace. The floor was mostly level, if not exactly smooth or even, as small puddles of water and dirt had formed. She tapped her staff on the ground, getting the waterwisps in the moisture that had soaked into the wood to spread into the moisture from the enthusiastic washing the eventual core had received. They responded to her readily, obeying her will with almost as much alacrity as the ones in her spit and blood. Slowly, so she didn't tire herself, she had the waterwisps spread, gathering all the moisture and dirt together into a large cloudy ball at the end of her staff.

When she was sure the workspace was dry enough, she carefully walked up the slope on her bare feet, dipped her feet into the water to get them dry, then threw most of the muddy water outside into the rain. What little water left around her staff, she dripped into her glass bowl, putting many of the waterwisps that had been in her staff into it. She placed the bowl of water on the floor, on top of one of the disks of gold and lead.

Lori put down another disk, and onto that she placed the stone from where she had slept and buried her pack for safe keeping. The phial went on another, the stopper lying next to it. Next was the unlit candle, followed by the clay cup turned over so it rested on its open end. She carefully took another, smaller candle and put it down on another disk, then carefully arranged four of the mirrors around it so it formed a box, with the fifth ready to complete the box. On another disk she placed the piece of quartz. It was actually the other Whisperer's quartz. The one she'd brought was much smaller.

The seven disks had been arranged in a circle. At their center, she placed the last disk, and on it, the bottle with the powder. Its contents glinted of many colors, and Lori felt an instinctive shiver of fear shake between her shoulder blades and vibrate its way up to her neck. She reminded herself that it couldn't grow on glass, that as long as the vessel was sealed it couldn't hurt anyone. Just don't do anything stupid, like breathe it in…

With the care of someone who's done this before but not nearly enough to be casual about it, Lori took her syringe and drew some blood. She mixed the blood into the bowl of water, the waterwisps from her body mixing with the ones in the water that had grown tamed by her power.

On the stone, she placed her old baby teeth. She channeled magic through it every day of the voyage here, reminding the earthwisps in it they came from her, that the tooth was born of her body. It wasn't as good as a fresh finger bone, still warm after being severed, but she wanted to keep her fingers.

Into the phial, she gently blew, calling the airwisps from her lungs and into the container. They moved as obediently as if they were her fingers, bound absolutely to her will. Quickly, she placed the stopper.

The fat candle, she lit with her magic, drawing firewisps from the warm core of her body. She felt herself grow cold, felt limbs start to shiver, but didn't stop, gathering the heat and firewisps into a binding that she used to ignite her candle. For a fire drawn from her very self, the dancing flame on the candlewick seemed insultingly small.

Still shivering, limbs still shaking to be warm again, she kept on breathing, giving power to the firewisps left within her to carefully raise her body heat, even as she cupped a hand over her open mouth. Breathing through her nose, she carefully closed her hand, and with delicate movements carefully tilted up the clay cup and slipped her hand into it. She released the darkwisps, drawn from the ever-dark places within her body, into the darkness under the cup.

As her body slowly grew warm again, she swayed slightly, feeling strangely empty. She couldn't stop though, she needed that empty feeling. That emptiness was meant to be filled.

Lori closed one eye and stared at the light in the box of mirrors. She concentrated on her breathing, on the power flowing through her, and channeled magic through her eye. Her sight slowly dimmed as the lightwisps left her, moving faster than thought towards the light she'd bound. She dropped the fifth mirror over the light, completing the box of mirrors.

She blinked, opening her other eye, and sighed. That one could still see. She closed her other eye to keep from being confused until she adjusted, even as she turned to the last of the elements of procedure. The quartz crystal sat innocently as she laid a hand upon it. Once more she drew breath, drawing in the magic in the air.

Very, very carefully, Lori channeled the power gently from her lungs, along her nerves that allowed her to command her body, and up to her arm. Then she gathered the wisps there and ordered them to move. Lightningwisps flowed down the nerves of her arms, from her bicep, down to her elbow, down her forearm. They flowed down her hand and through her palms, into the quartz. The quartz began to vibrate in place, even as her arm became numb, punctuated by patches of pins and needle.

Shaking, feeling drained, Lori collapsed down to sit, throwing an arm out to catch herself. Too late, she realized she was giving orders to an arm that had too few lightningwisps to function at the moment.

"Ow," Lori said, trying to rub the spot on her shoulder blades she'd fallen on and failing. Carefully, she pushed herself up with her functioning arm.

She wanted to take a moment, to have a drink, maybe eat something. A nap sounded nice too. But if she did, she knew she'd have to start all over again.

She was so close. A Dungeon of her own. Power and abilities beyond that of mere wizards, the power of a Dungeon Binder, who wielded all four magics!

Oh, and to make the settlement safe too, she supposed.

Taking a deep breath, she began the proce—

She paused, then stood up and grabbed her pillow, stuffing it into her now-empty pack so she'd have someplace soft to sit on. Sitting down, she finally put on her dry socks.

Ah. Much better.

Feeling fortified and more ready to face what lay ahead, Lori, wizard, Whisperer, began to make her Dungeon.

The first thing any Whisperer learned, whether they were a savant or an initiate, was that wisps were everywhere.

In every speck of dust, every drop of water, every empty space, there were wisps. They clung to the magic in the air, inert and unmoving until a Whisperer claimed them with a touch, bound them with will and imbued them with magic.

Not exactly the second thing they learned, more like the 25th, or possibly the 50th… definitely in the first hundred somewhere… was that all wisps could be found anywhere, even if only in relatively infinitesimal amounts. Within a lake teeming with waterwisps, there would be airwisps and firewisps. In the empty air, waterwisps and lightningwisps would float. In the darkest cave which had never seen the light of day, lightwisps could be found. Also, death by iridiation, but if you went down that deep you were basically asking for it.

Normally, a Whisperer's control over wisps was limited to what they could physically make contact with, or contact though a wire or other metal channel. There were also the wisps inside one's body, which were a part of you and had to be used carefully because while they were the easiest for a Whisperer to manipulate and control, they were a part of you and were needed for little things like living. Taking, for example, firewisps out of your body was an easy way to die of cold and hypothermia. Really, only a stupid or desperate person would do it.

Lolilyuri knew all this, as she was a properly educated wizard who'd learned from one of the many educational facilities in the demesne she'd grown up in. She'd done the work, spent hours in the local library, clubbed classmates from behind to check out reference books before they could, sacrificed nights of sleep, paid in blood, scars and student loans.

Sure, it hadn't been a big, old or important school, not like the big ones closer to their demesne's Dungeon where the Dungeon Binder ruled, but it had taught her the basics, the teachers actually knew what they were talking about and competently answered questions, it had given her a firm grounding to build up from, and most importantly she'd been able to afford it without prostituting her skills or herself, putting her in debt for years or getting a job that required her to, ugh, talk to people.

She'd be sure to repay them by thinking about sending monetary support their way once she had a Dungeon in only her mid-twenties and was pulling riches out of the ground as easily as sitting on a latrine. She wouldn't actually send anything, but she'd definitely think about it and feel mildly guilty when she certainly and inevitably didn’t send money. It was the least she could do for their contribution to her success.

Because dangerous as it was, the school had still taught her that there was some advantage to using wisps from your own body. They responded with alacrity no matter their distance from her, meaning she didn't have to be in contact with them to make her will known. It also meant that they could be used as a conduit to affect, imbue and bind wisps around them.

Lori laid her numb hand on the stone with her baby teeth, breathing in magic and channeling it through her bones and nails to remind the teeth to whom they belonged. They were her weakest link, because she was NOT using one of her bones, and while fingernails were good for channeling power to earthwisps, they wouldn't do for this.

She breathed in magic, imbuing it with her will, channeled it through her blood, her bones, her teeth, her organs and muscles and nerves and brain, through her lungs and her currently one working eye as she stared at the light of the candle. Then she channeled it outward. The magic seemed to leap through the air, crossing the distance and reached out to the wisps that had been part of her. It wasn't as quick and efficient as direct contact with her body or conducted through a wire, but it went. The magic she sent spread from her wisps, stimulating the pieces of this land that had known her will.

Lori took in a long breath, drawing in magic. This was it. The moment before the plunge. That last, fleeting chance to stop something before you throw yourself at the mercy of outsides forces for the foreseeable future.

She wanted this.

She channeled magic through her wisps, to the matter they had been joined to, through the gold-plated lead, through the ground and air. Her magic spread out, carried by her wisps. The matter she prepared burst as the water and blood vaporized, as the cork popped from the bottle of her breath. Light shone from the cracks of the box of mirrors, and a seeming cloud of darkness spread from under the upturned cup. Heat bloomed as all the wax in the candle became fuel for heat and flame, even as Lori used her wisps to guide the heat around her, dispersing it into the air and stone. Her tooth and the rock on which it lay melted like wax under her hand, becoming one with the stone beneath her. The quartz suddenly shattered as it twisted apart from within, and she felt her hairs tingle and sparks dance on her skin as bits of quartz settled on her.

Her wisps spread, binding other wisps to her will as she breathed circularly, drawing in more and more magic, spreading it around her, until her lungs needed more air than power, until…

She slammed her wisps, of earth, of air, of fire, of water, of light and dark and lightning, into the sealed bottle of powdered Iridescence, dragging the matter and substance they were part of with them. The bottle shattered as stone, rock, water, air and six discs of metal pulled in with them slammed into it, releasing the powder stored within.

The Iridescence began growing, greedily trapping her wisps. And in the moment, when as the bane of all life fed on her magic, as it was overwhelmed by more wisps and more power than it could use to grow more of itself…

Lolilyuri, wizard, Whisperer, desperate… bound the Iridescence to her will.

There was no endless moment where she thought it wouldn't be enough. No desperate breaths as she tried to push in more magic to overwhelm the Iridescence. No internal screaming as she focused every last drop of her will. She'd studied the procedure. She'd measured the amount of Iridescence she'd prepared. She'd measured her average capacity and the Iridescence's relative absorption and growth rate. She'd done it right.

That didn't mean she didn't still collapse into a boneless bundle of relief as she felt her binding snap into place, as her wisps became part of the Iridescence and the Iridescence became part of her wisps, as they collapsed into bright light and darkness and heat and cold and strands of melted metal and the feeling of sparks on her hairs as her components collapsed together. Wisps that had been part of her were pulled from the matter they had inhabited, pulled into the Iridescence she had claimed, reinforcing her hold on it as it started to pull magic from the very air, growing in size, pulling in more of the wisps around her…

Before her eyes, her Dungeon's heart, its core, its center, its focus… it came into being, rising weightlessly into the air, a trickle of melted gold and lead connecting it to the ground. Suddenly she could feel the wisps in the air around her, in the stones at her feet, the water still clinging to the cave's far walls and ceiling, the melted gold and lead that had been beneath her fat candle. She could feel them in the dark of the cave and the light shining through the fluttering edges of her blanket over the cave entrance, the potential for lightning in the air…

Beneath her feet, deep within the ground, beyond the touch of the rain and the flowing river, she thought she could feel Iridescence start to break apart, releasing their bounty of wisps. She could feel her awareness growing, spreading in all directions as the demesne started to grow, devouring magic out of the air and ground, as the number of wisps bound to her will as if they had come from her own body began to grow exponentially, every pace of distance her influence increased adding more and more wisps to her power…

Lori didn't know when she started laughing in triumph, but she didn't stop for a long time.

Finally, at long last… she had a Dungeon.

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When Lori finally stopped laughing with, admittedly, a touch too much megalomania, it was to the revelation that as she'd been standing around, her socks had gotten wet.

She dried them. Then she had to blink, stare, and slowly go over in her head what had just happened.

No need to breathe in magic, no channeling it through the relevant parts of her body to prepare it to bind to any particular kind of wisp. Magic had simply come from the core straight to the waterwisps in her socks, and she'd removed the liquid from the woolens around her feet. It had been as simple as controlling her spit.

She nearly broke into maniacal laughter all over again.

It was exactly like the stories and memoirs and biographies said! Not needing to build up power, because the core would serve both as repository and collector! Having total control of wisps within the spherical area of the demesne! The area they had wasn't very large, but that was like saying a village wasn't very large. Even from just the vague feeling of the wisps she could perceive—she wasn't a Horotract with perfectly exact special awareness—she could tell the demesne she had claimed extended far beyond the water break, and a sizable area of the river.

Admittedly her socks felt off, as they always did when she tried to dry her laundry by using waterwisps to draw water out of them, but for now she was willing to put up with that.

She took a deep breath, feeling the familiar sensation of pulling magic from the air into herself. She held it within her, not using it and observed in fascinated giddiness as it joined the mass of power in the core as easily as if she was touching it, like it was a part of her.

Which she supposed it was, now.

Lori stood up shakily, then blinked. She could see through both eyes again, could feel that the lightwisps she'd taken had been replaced. She raised her hands. Both moved.

She didn't laugh, but she did smile.

When she stepped out, it was still raining, but she stepped out with dry socks and dry boots. Truthfully, she half-expected to walk out into the sounds of some kind of scene of chaos and violence as wild beasts came for the settlers in the wake of her creating the Dungeon. Water immediately started to drip down from the brim of her hat and down her rain coat.

Surprisingly, people weren't crowded around the entrance of the cave. In fact, the only one waiting to greet her was the annoying brat.

"Are you done?" the child said, the rain streaming around the animal skin she was using as a makeshift rain cloak. "Lord Rian said to go tell him if you're done."

"Obviously someone has to educate you for your own good," Lori said. "Rian is not a lord. Lords have a title, land, and lots of money. The fact he's out here with us says he has none of that. So he can't be a lord."

"He's got a sword," the child said as if that settled it. It probably did for her.

"Any idiot can have a sword. Doesn't mean he's a lord, it just means he might be an idiot," Lori said.

"You shouldn't call people names," the child said. "Bad girls who call people names don't get dessert when there's dessert."

"Just tell me where the idiot is," Lori said tiredly.

"You're setting a bad example," the child insisted, but started walking anyway.

Lori followed after her, trying to see ahead of them. She should have been able to. Everyone knew—that is, every wizard knew from historically and academically verifiable sources, not just old bedtime stories and rumor—that a Dungeon Binder could perceive everything that happened in their demesne. And all right, technically she was doing that, but there had to be something more refined than feeling the vaguely people-shaped voids of wisps that she couldn't bind.

It came to Lori she was a Dungeon Binder now. Her. She was a Dungeon Binder, able to turn corpses into armies, tame beasts to pull her wagons—an extravagance—or as food—an even larger extravagance—create new beasts by putting together parts from old ones, create rooms that could heal people simply by being in them, literally make all the money she wanted…

She didn't laugh, but she did smile widely at the thought. She was no longer just rich, she basically had infinite money!

Lori reached into her pocket, pulling out her money pouch. She'd been saving it for emergencies, in case she needed to do some bit of quick and nasty Whispering and didn't have the time to breathe in the magic for it. A lot of them had been spent in Covehold Demesne to buy supplies, and their prices had been predictably extortionate. Right now, her little purse mostly had a bunch of small think beads, the ones commonly used for the lowest denominations outside of rare places like Cathlis Demesne and Open Hand Demesne. She had a few talk beads of both small and large sizes and denominations, slightly less fall beads, and three large wisp beads. The beads of crystalized magic each had a number on them denoting their value in addition to their size.

And now she could make them. She could make as much of them as she wanted!

Well, within reason. Something fun she could do later, once she figured out how!

She put away her money as they neared other people. After all, just because she'd been traveling with these people and sleeping near them was no reason to trust them. Actually, now that the core was up and running, she intended to sleep next to it and close up the cave behind her, in case some of them believed the stories of how if you killed a Dungeon Binder, you inherited their Dungeon. There are always ignorant idiots everywhere, after all.

Their little settlement actually had little in the way of proper buildings. The first batch of wood they'd cut down was still in the river, getting the last of the Iridescence out from the middle of it, and until they'd made the Dungeon, any building made of any material that wasn't glass or ice would start getting iridiated unless regularly washed or, more extremely, burned. Most shelters they had were tents made from canvas that could be stored in water when it wasn't raining, which was slowly damaging them.

The kitchen was their largest tent, made from several canvas sheets tied together. They had to bring it down after they'd eaten and drag it to the river, then set it up again in the morning. When it was up, it was where everyone who didn't have anything to do stayed, by virtue of being the largest roofed space. It was often tight, since the canvas wasn't all that big, but after weeks of being stuck together on a ship making the journey to this new continent, everyone could take a little proximity, especially when space was only a few steps away.

When Lori and the brat got there, the place was full of the usual bustle of people preparing the settlement's communal midday meal. It was the biggest meal of the day, since most people wouldn't have been able to eat breakfast unless they'd stashed a fruit of some sort in water to keep. Though there seemed a lot more people than there usually were. Lori was pretty sure that group of people were supposed to be cutting trees and dragging them to the river, and those men should have been on watch for beasts.

The corpse of the beast she'd killed was being butchered for meat with great enthusiasm. Lori was surprised. Shouldn't that thing be in the river, getting the iridiation washed off? Why were they risking almost-certain iridiation by cutting it up while it was so fresh? They weren't inside a demesne, they couldn't–

Lori paused. Oh, right.

"Lord Rian! Lord Rian!" the brat called. "Wiz Lori's here! I brought her, just like you asked!"

"He's not a lord," Lori muttered one last time before the probably-a-lord heard the brat and turned towards them.

Others had heard of course, and the murmurs of conversation died a little as people's heads turned.

Rian turned at his name, pushing his wet dark brown hair out of his face as he did so. He stepped forward as if representing the others in the settlement. He had his usual easygoing smile on, despite the wet dirt still clinging to him from his previous pratfall. He nodded at the brat. "Thank you, Karina," he said, and the brat smiled widely before scrambling to join her parents, her animal skin dripping. Lori almost reconsidered her 'actually a lord' theory. Lords never thanked you. "Did it work, Whisperer Lori?" he said.

For a moment, Lori considered proclaiming herself their absolute ruler, owner of all she surveyed, and threatening all annoying brats with death.

"It worked," was what she said instead.

"Yeah, we figured when the Iridescence started coming off the meat. And everything else," Rian said, nodding with such assurance you'd think he'd done it himself. "Good to be sure. Does that mean we can start building actual roofs now and stop sleeping in tents?"

"Yes," Lori said. There were sighs of relief, mixed in with several coughs and sneezes. The past few days of rain, while wonderful for keeping beasts away and Iridescence down, hadn't been kind to people's health, and without a Deadspeaker to heal people anymore, ailments were becoming a problem. The two doctors left had been doing what they could, but they were running low on supplies.

"Civilization at last," Rian said, which prompted some laughs. Apparently some people would laugh at anything now. "Looks like we're celebrating with meat everyone! Another thing we have to thank Whisperer Lori for!"

There were more cheers, and the enthusiasm of the butchering redoubled.

It was only when everyone had happily gone back to preparing food or resting while waiting for food to be prepared did Rian subtly stand next to her and say, in a low voice, "Now what?"

"Hmm?" she said. She'd been busy looking for a place to sit down. Dungeon Binder or not, apparently no one was going to relinquish any of the rocks or wet stumps they used as chairs.

"Now what do we do?" Rian asked again. "In case you haven't noticed, we're low on supplies, we're out of the food we'd brought, and we still don't have proper shelter because until just a little while ago any building we put up would kill us unless we washed it down inside and out every day. Even if we started right after lunch, everyone here would be too tired to finish anything."

Lori stared at him.

"What?" he said. "I'm just stating the obvious."

"I know," Lori said, who hadn't. Not really. Huh, no wonder the brat had been so thin. "I was just wondering why you brought it up now instead of after lunch."

"Neither of us are doing anything right now," he said. "We might be busy after lunch. I know I will be. At the very least we need to put up walls for the kitchen so the children and the sick will have somewhere warmer to sleep."

She supposed he was right. Lori had been planning to start fixing up the cave with the core into a proper bedroom.

"I suppose I could get started on healing people, then," Lori said.

Rian gave her a skeptical look.

"What's that for?" she said, annoyed. "I'm a Dungeon Binder now. I can do every kind of magic. That means healing."

"Well, yeah, but…" Rian looked troubled. "The… what's the name… Deadspeakers are the ones who can do healing, right?"

"Yes, them and Dungeon Binders," Lori said patiently. Maybe he wasn't rebelling so much as disowned for being slow?

"But to be a wizard, you need to study for years at a school, right?" Rian said.

"Yes, that's one way to do it," Lori said patiently.

"But you're a Whisperer," Rian said.

"Yes, we've established that," Lori said, patience twitching. She considered downgrading him to 'brat'.

"So… you probably studied Whispering at school," Rian said.

Now Lori was annoyed. "Yes," she said, patience no longer twitching but straining. Why was he talking like he was explaining something obvious to a child?

"Not Deadspeaking," Rian said.

"No, of course not," Lori said. "My magic was Whispering, why would I study Deadspeaki–!"

And suddenly she realized.

Oh, rainbows.

Those born with magic could use one of its four forms. They couldn't choose their magic, only hone it. Dungeon Binders were different, however. The act of becoming a Dungeon Binder made one capable of all four forms of magic. It was why every wizard dreamed of becoming one.

Lolilyuri was a Whisperer. She'd been born with the power to bind the wisps that existed in the world to her will, and through them manipulate the world. Though born with the ability, she'd needed to study so she could use it. She'd learned of the structures of materials, of the states of matter, of the composition of materials. She'd learned how the world around her was put together, how the elements that built it affected one another, so that she could understand how she needed to control the wisps to get what she wanted to happen.

"So, you didn't study Deadspeaking," Rian was still saying. "The kind of magic that heals. So even if you–"

"Yes, please stop talking. Please," Lori said, trying to sound calm.

Mercifully, he did. She could have done without the look of pity though.

Deadspeaking. It was the magic of wielding power over the bodies of the living and the dead. It healed and it killed, it could change the forms of the living and move the dead. Deadspeakers, supposedly, studied the bodies of animals and the structures of plants, and used the knowledge of the commonalities between all living things to manipulate them.

Lori knew a lot about the human body. The squishy parts were mostly water mixed with dirt. The bones had earthwisps, the brain and nerves lightningwisps, and every muscle had firewisps. Most darkwisps were in the torso and skull, in the cavities. Everything is supposed to stay on the inside.

She was pretty sure that wasn't enough knowledge to start Deadspeaking, and especially not healing.

Someone coughed, a pained, wet-lunged sound that felt like a hand squeezing her heart. Then there was only the murmur of happy conversation and the sound of the rain outside.

Lori sighed, then turned and stepped out into the rain.

"Where are you going?" Rian asked from behind her.

"I'm a Dungeon Binder now," Lori said striding forward through the wet, muddy ground. "I've dreamed of becoming one since I learned I could do magic. I figure I'd try it out properly."

She could feel the earth- and waterwisps beneath her. Lori channeled her will through the wire around her staff, into the ground. Water and earth separated, and dirt compressed, forming solid ground under her feet. She could feel the waterwisps in the rain and the airwisps in the atmosphere, claimed as they entered the sphere of her influence. She didn't even need to raise her staff, just sent her will upward. After a moment's pause, water began to fall thickly on either side of her. Directly overhead was empty air as droplets were directed away from her. A crosswind sent drops of water into her face. She willed it and the wind died like a man with his throat cut.

Lori smiled and went to find some bare ground.

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When Lori came back to the kitchen, it was to find Rian waiting for her with a bowl of food. Beast meat that had been cooked over flame—it seemed someone had realized they could safely burn wood now—served in with the stewed grains, wild berries, nuts and root vegetables they'd been eating over the last few days, and which they'd probably started preparing before the meat was butchered. It took a long time to cook stew using hot ingots of metal heated inside a sealed pit so the still-iridiated wood used in the fire wouldn't harm anyone.

Lori sighed. "I'm going to have to dig a new latrine," she said. "All this meat is going to give people indigestion."

"Food's food," Rian said cheerfully. He looked out at the new stone structure she'd been erecting. "I've never seen trees explode like that before."

"Happens when you turn all the water inside them into steam," Lori said, taking a spoonful and blowing on it. "You could do the same by turning it into ice, but not as reliable."

"Heat expansion, got it," Rian said, adding another point to the 'probably a lord column'. That wasn't a phrase uneducated people knew. Some people might know of the phenomenon, but not the phrase. "Couldn't you have just cut them with that water stream thing? We could have used the timber."

"Where's the fun in that?" Lori said, pretending she hadn't forgotten all about it. She swallowed the spoonful. Given the way it had steamed, she thought it would be far hotter, but the food was only pleasantly warm, and her empty stomach ate it up all the same.

To her surprise, Rian chuckled. "I supposed. Well, it'll be good for firewood anyway. At least we'd be able to get the kitchen warm, even if we don't finish all the walls by tonight."

"No need," Lori said, as she took another spoonful and swallowed. "Most of us should be able to fit in the new shelter I built."

"Ah," Rian said, looking back towards the stone structure. "I wondered what that was. No windows?"

"I'll make light," Lori said. "It'll only be while everyone is awake, anyway. A closed structure will keep heat in better."

"What about ventilation?" he said.

Oh. Right.

"After lunch," she said. "You can't expect me to keep working on an empty stomach."

"We have enough for seconds," he said.

"Wonderful. I'm glad the beast I killed is managing to feed everyone."

"I don't suppose there are any more of them/

Lori frowned and concentrated on her awareness of the wisps in her demesne. It took a while. While the entire demesne reacted with as much alacrity as if it were her own body, it was a body several orders of magnitude larger than what she was used to, such that she'd need a larger measure of volume to quantify it. She narrowed her awareness to the one pace of air immediately above the ground. That helped.

"I… think most of the smaller ones have left the demesne," she said. Iridiation was proportional to body volume. Smaller creatures would lose Iridescence faster in a demesne, so they would need to flee sooner. "And the larger beasts are moving out as well, I think? Hard to tell, I can't feel iridiation. But there aren't any close by."

Rian sighed. "Well, that's good. At least we don't have to worry about an injured beast suddenly coming out of nowhere to eat us."

"Not near the Dungeon, no," Lori said. Near the edges was another matter. Even in civilized lands, it wasn't unknown for beasts to cross the border briefly and hurt someone. "Now that we're not stuck behind the waterbreak, it'll be easier for people to collect food. There's a lot of what we've been eating growing around, so we should be fine until we can start growing our own crops. Maybe ask people to go seeling at the river so we'd have more meat."

"I'll ask around, see who volunteers," Rian said.

Lori nodded in satisfaction, then paused.

Ugh. Damned brat.

"Rian," she said, trying not to scowl. "Do you know where lords come from?"

"Well, when a lord and a lady love each other very much…" he began.

She glared at him.

"… they go to a special room," he said, grinning widely. "And nine months later the Dungeon Binder sends them a messenger with their new baby…"

"Could you be serious before I change my mind?" Lori said.

"Sorry," Rian said. "Where do lords come from? Besides their mother, that is."

"Historically, the rise of the nobility is linked with the favor of the Dungeon Binder," Lori said. "Barring anomalous places like Crownsbond Demesne, where they have a king whom the Dungeon Binder swears fealty to, people become lords because the Dungeon Binder raises them up to be lords."

"Ah…" Rian said. "Look, I don't want to become a lord just because we know each other–"

"I don't like you that much," Lori said, the 'or at all' going unsaid. "I'm making you a lord because you're capable and can get people to work. People listen to you. So. I'm making you Lord Rian. Your job is to keep all of us from dying because we're out of food or out of wood or someone's son has slept with someone's daughter because there's nothing else to do around here and people are taking wood axes to heads."

"Isn't that a lot of responsibility?" he said, for once actually looking alarmed.

"You're doing it already," Lori pointed out. "It's not like I askedyou to start digging the cave for the Dungeon."

"Well, it needed to be done," he said. "The sooner we had a Dungeon protecting us, the safer everyone would have been. And if we helped, you'd be able to keep us safe with the water break while we worked."

"And the patrols keeping watch for wild beasts?"

"That's just common sense. There are dangerous beasts out there and we didn't have a Dungeon to protect us yet."

"And the woodcutting parties?"

"Well, we needed wood, didn't we? Someone had to do it, and those guys knew what to do."

"And having the children be messengers and water runners?"

"It kept them out of trouble."

"Well Rian, I need more of that," Lori said. "I need to get people to work while I keep everyone safe. Everyone keeps looking at me like I'm going to set them on fire."

"Well, you do glare at people a lot," he said. "It kinda makes people nervous. Especially when you're muttering about drowning people or setting them on fire."

Oh dear. Had she said those things out loud?

"Don't worry, I told them you were just cranky because you had wet socks," Rian said. "You're always cranky when your socks get wet."

The words were pulled out of her with rusty hooks. "Thank you," she managed to draw out.

"You're welcome," he said cheerfully. "We're all in this together, after all."

"Hmm," Lori 'hmm'-ed. "Well, you're a lord now. So that brat will finally be right when she calls you 'Lord Rian'."

"Be nice," Rian 'now-definitely-a-lord-ugh-what-had-she-done?' said. "Karina tries very hard to smile ever since I told her that if you smile, other people will smile too. She's doing what she can to help keep morale up. Her parents give her and her siblings most of their food, so she feels guilty about not being able to do more."

What kind of strange person feels guilty about getting more to eat?

"Well, put her on seeling duty or something,' Lori muttered. "You're their lord now, you deal with it."

"I haven't agreed to this," Rian protested.

"What are you going to do, stop working?" Lori said.

"I might," Rian said. Even he seemed to know he didn’t actually believe that.

"Well, do it after we've gotten people moved into the shelter and had a night's dry sleep," Lori said. "You can quit tomorrow."

"Fine," Rian said, nodding in agreement. "I'll be lord for a day—well, half a day—but I'm quitting tomorrow! I'm not cut out for this sort of responsibility."

Lori nodded. "I'll knock out some air holes into the shelter after lunch. You talk to the doctors, see what needs to be set up to make the sick people comfortable without spreading whatever it is they have to the rest of us."

"Right," Rian said. "When you're done with the holes, remember to dig up those new latrines? I don’t think anyone wants to dig for a while."

"Fine. After lunch," Lori said.

Rian nodded and walked away, already looking around for men he could talk to.

Smirking to herself, Lori took her second spoonful of food. Ah, still just right. She was getting used to this already.

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After she finished eating—and eyed the large pot but ultimately forwent a second helping—Lori went back to her first building project as a Dungeon Binder.

While they weren't positioned in a flood plain, between the water-worn cliff face and the nearby river, it wasn't hard to assume that the rock underneath them was likely sedimentary. That meant she had to be careful when pulling the rock out of the ground with earthwisps. It would take more experience with earthwisps in general and this material specifically before she'd be able to identify lines of cleavage and tensile strength without examination and testing—read: hitting rocks with other rocks—so for the moment, she'd done what she could by making the composition of the stone as evenly distributed as she could before gently pulling it up out of the ground to form the half-cylinder arc of the shelter. It was a good, simple structure where the shape itself provided strength and support.

Normally, she could have done this in individual arcs, raising the stone up from the ground with support under them, then removing that support once the shape was set and the stone was supporting its own weight. Step to the side and raise another arc next to the first one, then fusing the two into one structure. The more arcs she made, the faster it would get as the earthwisps she bound would grow more and more used to her will.

She hadn't needed to do that anymore.

With the frankly ridiculous amount of power at her disposal, she had cleared trees from a convenient patch of ground between the kitchen and the river that no one had put up their tents on, had the ground roil in waves to carry the felled wood to one side, then proceeded to raise up the shelter all in one piece, with no supports. The supports where there because in the final calculation, it took less energy to raise up supports than it did to reinforce the stone so it wouldn't fall until the structure was complete

Energy was no longer a consideration.

That done, she had excavated the ground under the arced roof, standing aside as mud, dirt, water, rocks and roots flowed as if one mass past her and into a convenient pile, before she'd hardened the floor and walls to the same stone consistency so that they'd support the arcing roof. Lori then sealed the openings on the ends of the half-cylinder structure with more stone, save for a single wide entrance and a ramp leading down to the shelter's floor level.

Then had she finally gone back for lunch.

Upon returning to her building, she found the floor of her shelter thick with rainwater.

Ah. Right. She'd forgotten that could happen.

Collecting lightwisps, she bound them inside the shelter to produce illumination so she could keep working. She pulled the water out of the shelter, and it streamed up the stone-hard ramp and joined with the muddy ground. For a moment, Lori glared at the shelter. The lining she'd made was thick enough that groundwater wouldn't seep in, but she'd need some other solution for rainwater…

Walking to the pile of excavated dirt, she touched it with her staff. It shuddered, then started to flow after her as she proceeded to enclose the whole ramp, then added a recess to divert most rainwater away. Then she reconsidered it and leveled the ramp into steps. People would be stepping in with wet feet after all. They might slide.

Lori didn't have a spirit level, so she had to judge each step individually, using the beads in her money pouch to judge if they were, if not completely level, then at least level enough. She'd need to see about making a spirit level. She had a glass test tube raided from that other Whisperer's things, she might be able to use that…

That done, she cut another channel at the base of the ramp-like stairs, to catch any water that slipped in, and made a small alcove next to the shelter proper's entrance to act as a catch basin. Someone would need to remove the water from it every so often, but Rian would take care of it when she told him.

After that, she set about making windows.

Putting slit-like openings on one end of the cylindrical shelter was simple enough, since it was a flat wall that wasn't meant to be load bearing. Lori took advantage of this to put in a chimney there for a fire so people in the shelter would be able to keep warm. Knocking holes into the sides of the arcing stone structure of the roof was also simple. She decided to make the airhole-windows stone arcs as well, to try and continue supporting the weight of the roof arc. Buttresses were raised inside the shelter to support the openings and help transfer the weight into the ground, ruining the smoothness of the walls, but after finishing the first one, the structure seemed to be holding, so she felt safe building a few more.

After all, if it collapsed, it wasn't like she'd be sleeping in there.

The rain stopped at about late-afternoon. Water had condensed on the walls as she'd worked, glistening in the smooth, white illumination of the lightwisps she'd bound. She made the waterwisps change state, flashing everything into steam and raising the temperature of the shelter slightly for a moment, before the steam went out the windows.

Behind her, tentative footsteps came down the ramp. Rian stuck his head in, tracking in mud. "Is it ready? We don't have much time before it gets dark."

"It's ready," Lori said. "They'll have to sleep on the ground, but they'll have air and a place to build a fire. We can fix any problems in the morning."

Rian nodded, looking relieved. "I'll get someone to bring in some wood," he said. "Can you make a fire with it while I get everyone ready to move in?"

Lori nodded absently, looking around the shelter. She'd probably have to put in another fireplace tomorrow, since it might be too big for the single one they had. But right now, she was tired. Her head felt fuzzy from moving magic around all day, and her feet were killing her. She wanted to take off her boots, warm up her socks, roll up in her blanket and go to sleep.

Outside, people were moving, carrying things to be moved into the shelter. Blankets, clothes, tools that could finally be properly protected from the rain…

Lori wanted to rest. Rest sounded good.

Still, there was one more thing she had to do.

She found a nice area away from the river and dug a few holes down, making them nice and deep, with a little water at the bottom. Then she raised some simple dirt walls around them.

The latrines done, Lori went to tell Rian they needed seats.